Chapter 6 #2
Flash didn't answer. He scrubbed the towel through his hair. Easy waited, the way Easy waited, with the patience of a cat at a mouse hole.
"I didn't think she'd let me in the door," Flash said finally, low. "I had it worked out in my head. She was going to put a round through my chest plate and tell me to walk back to Virginia. I had a whole speech ready for after the bullet."
"Instead?"
"She listened."
He wrapped the towel around his hips and stepped out onto the cold tile.
Easy was where he'd thought, shoulder against the jamb, arms crossed, one eyebrow up.
The bruise on his jaw from the fight in Carlsbad was already yellowing at the edges.
He looked tired too. They were all tired. Supernatural shit came at a cost.
"You good?" Easy said.
"I will be."
"That's not what I asked."
Flash met his eyes. He didn't bother with the deflection. He was too worn down to wind up the joke, and Easy had earned more than that anyway. "I almost lost it, brother. When she said my name. I almost went down on the rug."
Easy nodded once. Slow. He didn't say anything.
"Twister," he called, eyes still on Flash. "Flash needs resuscitation."
"Oh? Is he breathing?"
"Barely."
"What does he have? Lechuza fever?" Twister chuckled. “Tell him to find a paper bag and breathe slowly in and out.”
Easy laughed softly, reached over and clapped a hand around the back of Flash's neck, the way he did when they were getting real, brief, and firm, and entirely without ceremony. Then he stepped back into the hall. “What we fight for?” He set his hand over his heart. “It’s all right here, man. We equally have way too much to lose.”
“You getting soft on me?”
“Blame it on too little sleep and the face of my wife that never leaves me day or night.” He slipped out the door. "Double time it," he said over his shoulder. "She's downstairs, and we have to convince her to come with us." He tapped his flat stomach. “And, fuck, I’m starving.”
Flash stood in the steam with water still running off his hair, the towel wet at the hip and Easy's hand still warm on the back of his neck, trying, for one second, to remember what it had felt like to be a man who didn't have her.
He couldn't.
He pulled on a clean shirt, underwear, and jeans, and went downstairs.
* * *
Could the man be any more devastating, and how was she going to handle having him this close to her?
She watched him from across her table while he laughed at something Easy said, and her body cataloged him the way it had been cataloging him since Venezuela without her permission.
The easy way he held a room without trying.
The achingly broad shoulders that moved loose under his shirt when he laughed.
His hands resting open on the table, calloused, large, and so very gentle.
His mouth, generous, quick to humor, the lower lip slightly fuller than the upper, was the mouth that had found hers an hour ago and broken her open.
He felt expansive in the room, the kinetic warmth opposite of her own contained dark, and the contrast made her chest ache.
He looked up. His gaze caught hers, and the easy laugh in his face softened into something steadier, something that knew exactly what she had been doing while she watched him, and her stomach did the thing it had been doing for a year every time she let herself remember him.
Dinner was done, and they had consumed every morsel. She smiled. There was something satisfying about handling five very dangerous men.
It had taken every ounce of her willpower to hear the whole story.
At first, she just sat there. Her ancestor had been the first Shadowguard?
This remarkable woman five centuries ago had accepted the magic of the Veil, understood what she had to do, used her power to stop Chaos all on her own.
She’d built the now failing wards and closed the font against any threat that would seek to manipulate it.
“She looks shell-shocked,” Twister said, “Should I pull out the smelling salts?”
“This sounds like an epic fantasy, not real life,” she murmured, seeking out Flash as if he were an anchor in this cosmic storm. Those steady gray eyes grounded her. She held onto that feeling. “Let’s move to the living room where it’s more comfortable.”
They made the shift, and as they settled, Fly said, “Let me assure you.” His beautiful Caribbean-blue eyes showed every bit of his experience.
“It’s real. I’ve lived it and had to rewire my brain to accept it.
When I was fully realized at the end of our reparations trial, I became the kite, and I’m not even sure of the power I can wield in the Veil.
I can tell you it was awesome, humbling, and a bit scary.
We’re all learning as we go. I’m sure it was the same way for your ancestor. ”
“Maybe…” Lechuza couldn’t shake the feeling that there was so much more to this than she could fathom. “You’re saying that in the Veil, I’ll become a white owl.” She snuggled closer to Flash and he put his arm around her shoulders.
“You already have, subconsciously. You saved my life when I parachuted into Ecuador, before the Guardian spoke to me,” Flash said.
“I did?” She turned to him, met those eyes again, and her heart went into her throat.
The memory flashed through her, jolting her.
She gasped. “I thought that was a…a dream. Oh, my God. That actually happened?” She swallowed hard, the memory of being an owl, flying to him, supporting him so he could pull his ripcord was vivid.
He had been threatened, and she refused to kowtow to any pushy asshole who told her that she had to listen.
She’d saved Flash…in the dream, but apparently it hadn’t been a dream.
She reeled, rising and pacing, her body warming, sweat building. She trembled. Before she could take another step, Flash stopped her, taking her hands into his.
“We know this is overwhelming,” he said with a squeeze. “We’ve had the chance to learn everything bit by bit. Take your time.”
“Who would I even consult? My grandparents are old, but not that old. Even my great-grandparents wouldn’t know anything about a confrontation that happened five hundred years ago.
” His expression softened. “I’ve never heard one word about this ancestor, but since the…
Guardian seems to know about her, I guess I have to take that at face value.
” She clutched Flash’s hands. They were warm and solid.
Without thinking, she curled into him, suddenly cold.
“There might be information about her in my family’s library, but five centuries is a long time. Do you know her name?”
She was met with blank faces.
She took a breath. “You’re telling me I have to open a font that was closed and that I’m the only one who can do it because of my bloodline. That means we have to find the font. Do you know where it is?”
“The Guardian assumes it’s near the home of the Inca,” Fly said. Lechuza opened her mouth, but Fly beat her to it. “We know. Six possible countries, twenty-five hundred miles.”
“That guy was a wealth of information,” Twister said, sarcasm heavy in his voice.
“Do you know why she closed the font? How to open it?”
Again, blank faces.
“So, you’re well-prepared.”
Her dry tone made Flash chuckle.
“I guess we thought you would somehow know,” Easy said gingerly, a sheepish grin on his face.
“Right. I’ll just contact my dead ancestor through a Ouija Board and ask her. My head hurts.”
“I’m getting a good vibe here,” Easy said, leaning forward with a conspiratorial grin. “So is that a yes?”
“Yeah, get on the…um…how do we communicate?” Lechuza asked, completely out of her element. She would have to rely on these men to connect with a magical being. She couldn’t even believe what she was saying.
“Well, you see, Flash has these golden threads that he uses to bind us in brotherhood,” North began, his voice earnest and booming in the small space, “and somehow he has a direct line to—”
North cut off due to her staring at him, her eyes going wide. Every rational, here-and-now bone in her body rebelled.
Then she pushed on Flash’s chest and looked up at him, her brain completely frozen. “Golden threads…” she stuttered, the words tasting like insanity in her mouth. Her whole body melted at the thought that he was holding all this together.